A stunning new smog-eating 'vertical forest tower' will feature luxury apartments and 300 species of plants

stefano boeri vertical forest A smog-eating tower will soon go up in the Netherlands city of Utrecht.

On the outside, 10,000 trees and shrubs — nearly half the amount found in New York's Central Park — will fill the skyscraper's facade, roof, and balconies. Inside, it will feature 200 luxury apartment units, restaurants, a fitness center, and offices.

Called the Utrecht Vertical Forest, the 300-foot-tall tower will host around 30 different plant species. The plants will absorb 5.4 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year — the equivalent of about one car, according to designers from Italian architecture firm Stefano Boeri Architetti. In addition, the company said the tower will produce about 41,400 tons of oxygen annually, roughly the same as what 2.5 acres of forest generates.

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The mixed-use building is being billed as the "new healthy center of Utrecht," since the plan calls for healthy eateries, a gym with yoga studios, bike parking, and a small public park. The Vertical Forest Hub, a new research center on urban forestation, will also have offices on the ground floor.

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In June, Stefano Boeri Architetti announced that it will build a "forest city," made up of towers covered in 40,000 trees and nearly one million plants, in Liuzhou, China by 2020. The skyscrapers' designs be will similar to that of a two-tower complex that Boeri designed in Nanjing. Another tower in Lausanne, Switzerland will follow a similar plan and is expected to open by early 2018.

Like these projects, the Utrecht Vertical Forest aims to make its city a little more green (even if its effect on pollution is minimal).

The tower "attempts to create, in Utrecht's city center, an innovative experience of cohabitation between city and nature," the architects wrote.

Construction, which is expected to last three years, will begin in 2019.

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